By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — Three Rivers’ defense showed up at the right place at the right time late in their game Friday against Dowagiac to stifle a late comeback from the Chieftans and get the win in the Wildcats’ home opener, 21-17.
The Wildcats led 21-3 at the end of the third quarter, but Dowagiac scored two touchdowns in the final stanza on a 13-yard touchdown run by Cooper Szymczak with less than five minutes to go, and a two-yard touchdown run by Tim Masterson with 2:14 to go in the game to bring it back to a 21-17 score.
After Three Rivers’ offense turned the ball over on downs, the third time they had done so in the game, on their subsequent drive, Dowagiac made it all the way down to Three Rivers’ 39-yard line on their next possession. But, on a fourth-and-five from that spot with nearly 30 seconds left, Dowagiac quarterback Skyler Vincek was sacked by the Wildcats’ Carson Bowley to end the drive and allow the Wildcats to kneel out the last 23 seconds of the game and seal the victory.
“I told these kids all week, when we play Dowagiac, you can go back through the years, very seldom is it a blowout one way or the other. That is a gritty team over there, they’re always well-coached, and so are we,” Head Coach Jeff Awe said. “We’re gritty, the kids dug in tonight, and we’re proud of them.”
It was not the offense that scored the majority of the points for the Wildcats in Friday’s contest, but rather the defense and special teams that buoyed what was an otherwise lackluster offense in the first half that only managed less than 20 yards in the half.
On the first drive of the game for the Chieftans in the first quarter, one play after a big gain for Dowagiac was wiped out due to an illegal shift penalty and after a false start made it a third-and-11, Vincek forced a throw over the middle that was intercepted by the Wildcats’ Brayden Carpenter. He then weaved his way through to find paydirt for a pick-six touchdown to put the Wildcats up 7-0 just two and a half minutes into the game after a Daniel Beachey extra point.
After starting at its own 41 after the pick-six, Dowagiac would turn the ball over on downs in their next drive, followed by Three Rivers punting the ball away on its first drive of the game midway through the first after only notching one first down and nine yards total.
Dowagiac’s next drive would go for six minutes and make it all the way to the Three Rivers 4-yard line before eventually settling for a 23-yard field goal by Johannah McDonald to put the Chieftans on the board, 7-3. The ensuing kickoff would see Three Rivers’ Blake Stewart take the ball from his own 16-yard line and burst through a seam in the Chieftans’ kick coverage, racing past everyone down the right sideline and finding the end zone for an 84-yard kick return touchdown to extend the Wildcats’ lead to 14-3.
“We practice that, and we put a lot of time into our special teams,” Awe said. “They blocked it up, Blake got a seam, and he’s one of the fastest kids in our conference.”
Both teams were unable to find their footing on offense the rest of the half, with Dowagiac punting the ball on two of their next three possessions and fumbling on the other, and Three Rivers turning the ball over on downs at their own 41 yard line, punting, and having a last-second drive near the end the first half stall near midfield after a bad snap cost them 16 yards, ending the first half with a 14-3 Wildcat advantage.
The Wildcats’ offense would improve, moving the ball on its first possession of the second half all the way down near the Chieftans’ red zone, which included a 22-yard strike from quarterback Mason Awe to wideout David Wills. However, a 40-yard field goal attempt was missed short and wide to turn the ball back over to Dowagiac.
Dowagiac would go three-and-out on its possession following the miss, and Three Rivers would take just three plays to score, as Ethan Moreland would take a toss from Awe and burst past the linebackers and safeties and down the right sideline all the way to the end zone to make it a 21-3 ballgame after an extra point by Jacin Selent.
That would be the score heading into the fourth quarter, where Three Rivers turned the ball over on downs to start the quarter, followed by the first touchdown drive by the Chieftans, which went 79 yards in nearly seven minutes to make it 21-11 after a two-point conversion. Three Rivers’ next possession would end in two plays after an interception by Devin Rock of Dowagiac, which set up the seven-play, 58-yard touchdown drive to make it 21-17 after the extra point was missed. That set up the turnover on downs and the subsequent defensive stop by the Wildcats to end the game.
Awe was the first to admit the offense was not the best unit on the field Friday, but said the other two facets of the game stepped up.
“The offense struggled tonight. Last week, the offense picked up the defense, tonight it was the other way around, the defense picked up the offense,” Awe said. “The defense played well the whole game; they stopped the run about as well as we could down three guys in one week.
“We’ve got some things to work on; I wasn’t real happy, third-and-1, fourth-and-1, as big and strong as we are up front, and we can’t get a yard, we’ve got some things to work on there.”
However, Awe was proud of his team’s resilience and effort to grit out the victory.
“The objective is to win the game, and they got that done, we’re 2-0. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1-0 or 100-0, the result is the same,” Awe said.
Three Rivers had 155 yards of offense in Friday night’s contest, with 54 yards on the ground and 101 through the air. Dowagiac had 180 yards of offense, with 125 coming on the ground and 55 through the air. The Wildcats were led by Awe, who had 101 yards and went 11-of-23 on passing attempts on the night. Moreland had 15 carries for 66 yards, and Wills had three receptions for 41 yards.
Three Rivers will take on Otsego Friday, Sept. 12 on the road at 7 p.m.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
